June 24, 2013

Soul Food Monday! - An Inspirational Link-Up #37

Man is the soul who uses the body as an instrument of self-expression.

Hola Readers! Hope this morning everyone is having a great rise along with a BIG appetite for life where ever in the world you may find yourself today. A life filled with excitement and prosperity! Acknowledging first that we are more than just a body is a good start to healthy wholeness. Let's take time to feed the soul. We feed our bodies with healthy foods to get enough energy and nutrients for optimal growth and development. We feed and stimulate the mind with books, movies, plays and games for personal and creative development. The same principal applies to feeding the soul. It is just as important to feed the body as it is to feed the soul! After all, the soul is the core of who we are! It is who we are. My own experiences of honoring my soul has helped me make this connection with my very soul. And my life is so much richer in so many ways I could not have even imagined. This is why I refuse to believe that we are just here to work, eat, sleep and die. Yes, these are inevitable experiences we live as human beings, but we are spiritual beings as well. So join me every Monday with a different food for the soul.

One of the books I'm reading these days is Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken. It is a story of survival. A testament to the resilience of the human mind, body and spirit, the preface read. This is what I connected with and why I picked up the book to read. I am known to read a few books at a time. Not at the same reading but rather alternating a book week to week or even a few days interval. This time around I am reading five books and Unbroken is one of them. It may take a longer time to finish one book when you're also reading others verses just reading it alone, but strangely enough I find self-fulfillment in reading this way. It's hard to explain, it just works for me. When I come across a book to read, I believe it has come to me for a reason. Nothing is coincidence in my philosophy. Just yesterday I read a passage from the book that formed an emotional bridge allowing a deep connection from within. A connection, understanding and solace to something that from time to time haunted me from childhood."The crash of Green Hornet had left Louie and Phil in the most desperate physical extremity, without food, water, or shelter. But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, theinnermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized,to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind. Men subjected to dehumanizing treatment experience profound wretchedness and loneliness and find that hope is almost impossible to retain. Without dignity,identity is erased. In it absence,

men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live. One American airman, shot down and relentlessly debased by his Japanese captors, described the state of mind that his captivity created: 'I was literally becoming a lesser human being.'

"Few societies treasured dignity, ad feared humiliation, as did the Japanese, for who a loss of honor could merit suicide. This is likely one of the reasons why Japanese soldiers in World War II debased their prisoners with such seal, seeking to take from them that which was most painful and destructive to lose. On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil learned a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty. In places like Kwajalein, degradation could be a lethal as a bullet."

Beautiful posting Mayra, and very inspirational. I'm being inspired this week by my 10th year wedding anniversary. We've made it this far truly for better and for worse; and I'm blessed because of it. So love is inspiring me this week.